-plus countries, every state in the united states. it begs the question with your history and the present work you're doing. what world fundamentally are we living in? >> a transforming one. frankly, in a lot of good ways. i think people are always surprised when they meet me, and they expect someone really gloomy and anxiety-ridden and depressed about the world because i'm covering a lot of things. but on global poverty we're making tremendous progress. on so many of these issues that i care about we're inching progress. global health issues. you know, i remember my first trip to africa, and i remember the thing that horrified me the most was how many blind people there were. every capital you would see these middle aged blind people begging and being led around by their children or likely grandchildren, and it was pretty horrifying. now river blindness has been dramatically reduced partly because of jimmy carter more than anybody else. dracoma also it's is also on its way out. you don't have people in their 30s routinely going blind